Catacombs After Closing Time, with the Capuchin Crypts

The catacombs shut in the afternoon like everything else. This tour goes in after that, with the gate unlocked for the group, which is the whole proposition: the same tunnels, without the queue of school parties and with the lights on for you. The galleries run for miles under the city, cut into soft volcanic rock in several storeys, lined with the niches where the dead were sealed. Depending on the date the visit is at the Catacombs of Priscilla or those of San Sebastiano; both were in use when Christianity was still a minority religion, and Priscilla holds early biblical frescoes including a painting many take to be the oldest surviving image of the Nativity. Before that, the Capuchin Crypts under Santa Maria della Concezione, where five chapels were decorated with the bones of the friars themselves. The rooms are named for what they are built from: the Crypt of the Skulls, the Crypt of the Leg Bones and Thigh Bones. It was intended as an argument about mortality, and it still works as one. A transfer returns you to the starting point at the end. Hotel drop-off is not included. Arrive ten minutes early at the Triton Fountain in Piazza Barberini.